Dar al -Islam                           

 

For Muslims, the concepts Dar al-Islam (Abode of Islam) and Dar al-Harb (Abode of War) serve most generally to differentiate Muslim spaces from non-Muslim spaces.
 

• Dar al-Islam designates a territory where Muslims are free to practice their religion, though this often implies the implementation of Islamic law, whereas Dar al-Harb represents those lands ruled by non-believers.
   

• It was deemed incumbent upon Muslim rulers – specifically the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphs who often continued the expansion begun by the Prophet Mohammad – to extend the Dar al-Islam through jihad.
   

• It is important to note that the objective of this jihad was not to forcibly convert non-believers to Islam, but to extend the jurisdiction of Islamic government.

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The law thus divides unbelievers theologically into those who have a book and profess what Islam recognizes as a divine religion and those who do not; politically into dhimmis, those who have accepted the supremacy of the Muslim state and the primacy of the Muslims, and harbis, the denizens of the Dar al-harb, the House of War, who remain outside the Islamic frontier, and with whom therefore there is in principle, a canonically obligatory perpetual state of war until the whole world is either converted or subjugated.

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(Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World)